


Would You Light My Candle?

by KelliDiane



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Beginning of Niall and Louis' relationship, M/M, Mentions of Demi/Niall, Past Character Death, mentions of drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-07
Updated: 2013-03-07
Packaged: 2017-12-04 14:36:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/711820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KelliDiane/pseuds/KelliDiane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We could light the candle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Would You Light My Candle?

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a RENT/One Direction crossover post on Zaynsallthat's tumblr.

Niall sighed heavily as he strummed his guitar aimlessly. It had been a long day of failed auditions and pleading for a job. The people in the room had taken one look at him with his worn out leather jacket and greasy, badly dyed blond hair and dismissed him. It hurt knowing that your looks were more important than your talent nowadays.

He picked up the newest sheet music he had scribbled on and frowned unhappily at the words. The notes were perfect and sounded amazing, but the words were always the hardest and never came out right. He was told that the industry wanted a new sound, a new kind of track to play on the airwaves. Apparently, acoustic was what they wanted, but they truly wanted a love ballad.

He couldn’t write a love ballad. He wasn’t in love.

Strike that. He was in love. The only problem was that his love was dead.

The love of his life lay six feet in the ground because they had been carless. One night of a shared needle and she was gone about a year later.

Niall, devastated, had cleaned up. He stopped shooting up, stopped smoking, stopped everything. The only thing he did that was dangerous anymore was drinking. He couldn’t give up drinking. That was his only escape from his hell that he called life.

He looked around his flat that he shared with his best mate Liam and sighed heavily again. It was mostly empty. They both were dirt poor and had very little to their names. They slept in sleeping bags and sat in lawn chairs that they had nicked from some unsuspecting couple’s patio a few blocks over. Their coffee table was really just a piece of plexiglas hot glued to empty cases of beer.

It worked for them though.

Granted, they nearly froze to death every winter, they wouldn’t change anything. Their heat source was all of Niall’s failed sheet music and Liam’s movie scripts that had been rejected far too many times to count thrown into a metal trash receptacle and burned until there was nothing but ashes. It was a tough life, but this is what they signed up for when they took on the role of starving (quite literally) artist.

A knock on the door jarred Niall from his thoughts.

Getting up, he shouted to let the person know he’d be right there and went to set his guitar in the corner of the room. He hurried over to the door and opened it to see his neighbour from upstairs leaning against the stair railing behind him with his hip jutted out to the side and his arms crossed against his chest and that self-pleasing smirk plastered across his face.

Niall would be lying if he said that he had never checked out his neighbour before. That was one reason the blond was so popular at the parties he used to attend. He didn’t mind sucking dick or being having his dick sucked as long as he was getting pleasure from it. He hadn’t had a proper wank since Amy died, let alone a shag.

The brunet boy stepped forward and let his hips sway easily as he stalked towards Niall. He held a small, white candle in his right hand and lazily pulled his arm away from his chest and held the object up questioningly. “Got a light?”

Niall frowned. “Do I know you? You’re,” he took in the boy once again and quickly ushered him inside the small apartment. “You’re shivering.”

The newcomer shrugged and slithered out of Niall’s grasp to move and explore the new room he was suddenly in. “It’s nothing, they turned off my heat. And I’m just a little weak on my feet. Would you light my candle?”

He turned to see Niall staring intently at him and frowned, brushing at his hair to make sure it was fine. “What are you staring at?”

Niall blushed as he realized he had been caught staring at the gorgeous boy standing in his living room and went to move to light the boy’s candle with the matches from his pocket. “Nothing… Your hair in the moonlight.” He squinted at his face. “You look familiar.”

The lithe boy stumbled a little and Niall rushed forward to catch the beauty in his arms. “Can you make it?”

Blue eyes locked on his own stunning cerulean pair and Niall nearly missed the answer the boy managed to whisper out with a small smile.

“Just haven’t eaten much today. At least the room stopped spinning anyway.” He quickly grew uncomfortable in the blond’s arms and started squirming a little under the intense gaze that was zeroed in on him. “What?”

Niall smiled softly. “Nothing. Your smile reminded me of-.”

The boy rolled his eyes and moved away from Niall. Once his back was turned, the brunet quietly blew out the small flame on his candle and dropped something small in the process. “I always remind people of… Who is she?”

The blond swallowed heavily at the sudden lump in his throat. “She died. Her name was Demi-.”

The boy turned around quickly. “It’s out again.” He realized that Niall had been talking and quickly blushed a light scarlet colour. “Sorry ‘bout your friend. Would you light my candle?”

Niall nodded and pulled another match from the container and struck it to light the wick. Once that was done, he stayed close to the boy and stared at his eyes again. “Well…”

The boy smiled lightly and looked up at Niall through his thick dark eyelashes. “Yeah?”

He unfortunately didn’t notice how the wax had already started to melt and when it hit his finger, he hissed in displeasure at the feeling. “Ow!”

That seemed to break whatever spell Niall had found himself under and he looked down to see the rapidly cooling blob of liquid on the other’s finger. “Oh, the wax. It’s-.”

“Dripping.” The other finished for him nodding slightly. He reached forward and linked their fingers together and tried his best to look seductive. “I like it between my-.”

“Fingers!” Niall yelled as his face turned bright red at the thought of where this conversation was going. He needed to get the boy out and quickly. “I figured. Oh well, goodnight.”

The boy frowned and quietly turned back towards the door and dejectedly started to leave before getting a burst of confidence. Rolling his shoulders back and blowing out his candle yet again, he made it to the doorframe before sticking his hand in his back pocket and frowning when he realized it was empty. He knocked on the open door and turned to see Niall looking up from the ground.

“It blew out again?” The blond asked incredulously. He knew there was a draft from the windows, but it wasn’t that bad, was it?

The brunet shook his head and pushed the bangs from his face. “No, I think that I dropped my stash.” He started frantically searching every surface of Niall’s flat.

The blond just watched in amusement as he tried to place the boy. “I know I’ve seen you out and about, when I used to go out.” He nodded at the forgotten candle in the boy’s hand. “Your candle’s out.”

To his credit, the boy didn’t seem fazed by anything that Niall had said. It was almost like he hadn’t even heard the Irish accent. “I’m illing. I had it when I walked in the door. It was pure!”

He sighed. “Is it on the floor?” He sank to his knees and began looking everywhere for the small baggie that eluded him.

Niall just stood confused and zeroed in on the boy’s ass as it stuck up in the air as he searched the floor. “The floor?” He sounded so distracted, even to his own ears.

The boy looked back to ask for help when he noticed Niall pretty much drooling over his bum. He shook it a little to give the blond a show and smirked naughtily. “They say that I have the best ass below 14th street. Is it true?”

Niall’s eyes never left the round, bountiful ass in front of him. “What?”

The boy laughed lightly. “You’re staring again.”

“I mean you do… Have a nice- I mean…” Niall blushed and ran a hand through his hair all flustered. He tried to change the subject. “You look familiar.”

“Like your dead girlfriend?” The boy asked with a small smirk.

Niall rolled his eyes before dropping to his knees to help look for whatever had been lost. “Only when you smile, but I’m sure I’ve seen you somewhere else.”

The boy stopped searching for a second and looked at Niall questioningly. “Do you go to the Funky Buddha? That’s where I work, I dance.”

“Yes!” Recognition ignited in the blond’s eyes. Demi had loved going there and commenting on how pretty and flexible the other girls were. “They used to tie you up.”

The boy’s smile dropped as he looked over at Niall. “It’s a living.”

Not noticing the boy’s discomfort, Niall went right on ahead. “I didn’t recognise you without the handcuffs.”

Blue eyes quickly darted away to the floor and white teeth bit into a bottom lip that had way too many cuts on it to be accidental. The boy suddenly remembered the candle. “We could light the candle. Oh, won’t you light the candle?”

Niall nodded, confused at the sudden change in conversation, but chalked it up to a withdrawal from whatever drugs the boy was using. He cringed at the thought of drugs in his apartment. “Why don’t you forget that stuff? You look like you’re sixteen.”

The boy huffed indignantly. “I’m nineteen, but I’m old for my age. I’m just born to be bad.” He stood and shook his hips to the imaginary beat that only he could hear.

Niall stood and watched as the other continued to look around the room for his habit. “I once was born to be bad. I used to shiver like that-.”

“I have no heat. I told you.”

“I used to sweat-.”

“I have a cold.”

Niall rolled his eyes. “Uh huh. I used to be a junkie.”

The boy smiled and turned to Niall and made a grand sweeping gesture. “But now and then I like to feel good.”

Once again, Niall found himself rolling his eyes. He spotted something on the floor this time and immediately knew what it was. “Here it- ummm.”

He bent over and picked up the small bag and shoved it in his back pocket.

“What’s that?” The boy narrowed his eyes at the blond.

Niall easily lied. “It’s a candy bar wrapper.”

The boy frowned and began wandering again and nearly dropped his candle in his lack of focus.

Not wanting his home to go up in flames, Niall managed to discreetly lick his thumb and forefinger and put the tiny flame out before it hit the floor.

“We could light the candle.” The boy held up the now extinguished flame and frowned. It had been lit only a second ago. He rounded on Niall and pushed the male back onto one of the lawn chairs before climbing up and straddling him. “What’d you do to my candle?”

Niall suddenly couldn’t breathe with the beauty in his lap like this. He could practically feel his cock twitch with arousal at being this close to someone who wasn’t Liam (who was sadly and tragically straight) in months. He blinked rapidly a few times to get his thoughts back. “That was my last match.”

The boy shrugged and leaned in to press open mouth kisses at the pale column of skin presented to him. “Our eyes will adjust. Thank god for the moon.”

Niall scoffed and quickly let out a moan at the feel of someone’s hands and mouth on him. “Maybe it’s not the moon at all. I heard James Cameron’s shooting down the street.”

The boy pulled back and took one of Niall’s hands in both of his and began running his hands over the appendage and stroking the skin their and examining it. “Bah humbug. Bah humbug.”

The blond frowned. “Cold hands…”

“Yours too.” The boy smiled brightly and winked. “Big. Like my father’s.”

Again the boy’s mood flipped and he was quickly springing up from Niall’s lap and pulling the Irishman to his feet. “You wanna dance?”

“With you?”

Loud laughter broke through the air as the brunet threw his head back. “No, with my father.”

Niall smiled brightly. “I’m Niall.”

“They call me…” The boy paused and again bit his lip. “They call me Louis.”

He wrapped his arms around Niall’s neck and pulled him in for kiss and let his hand roam down the front of Niall’s shirt and explore his torso before moving to cup the boy’s ass.

Pulling back, Louis smiled triumphantly as he help up the small baggie full of the expensive white powder. He placed one last kiss on Niall’s nose before walking out the door.

Niall stood, shocked, in front of his lawn chair before realising that Louis would be back soon enough.

The boy had left his candle.


End file.
